We open with Watson in therapy, it's a flashback episode! Yay! Holmes is dead! Double-yay! (Kinda.. speeding through the official storyline here, aren't we?)
Holmes gets a bunch of thanks for doing his stuff. (Cufflinks! Tie pin! That hat!) He's an official boffin now! Watson worries about the press.
Naughty naughty Moriarty, we're after the crown jewels. And the bank of england, and Pentonville prison. All to lovely music. And as the SWAT team arrives, he's sat there wearing the crown jewels, in their display case. Well, why not?
And, um, because he wrote "Get Sherlock" first, they're gonna call in Holmes. Evem though he, you know, wans't there, isn't a witness, and they caught him red handed wearing the crown jewels. (Which is, I guess, criminal damage? Trespass? Not theft though.)
And Holmes has stalkers! Stalkers who wear deer stalkers! Or, at least, newspaper reporters. "You can trust me"... right. Holmes does his "I am a smartass goit" trick.
Then he's in court, and he's a hge smartass again. Gives Moriarty a great rep. The judge... arrests him for contempt. In Moriarty's cell.
Quote the first: "I pulled a gun, he tried to blow me up; I felt we had a special something."
Holmes decides the whole getting arrested thing is Moriarty's scheme. Because, um, he's not a complete idiot.
Quote the second: "I'm surprised it took them that long, to be honest. There's a queue for the loo."
And they find him not guilty. So Holmes makes tea, and plays his violin. And doesn't, I dunno, shoot Moriarty in the head. In response, Moriarty plays petty power games.
Quote the third: "We're just alike you and I, except you're boring."
Yay! "The final problem" finally gets said.
Moriarty claims to have the ultimate computer hack. Meh, it'll do as a MacGuffin?. And he's, basically, after "Which of us is better."
Quote the fourth: "I never liked riddles."
Quote the fifth: "I owe you." (Also I.O.U. in an apple)
Time passes, Watson's is tracked via his debit card. And bothers him as his club. Where he is informed lots of killers have moved into the neighbourhood. Dull is asking for him to look after Holmes, in an immensely smug way. There's a 'kiss and tell' story coming up in the papers.
An envelope of sand, sealed with wax is delivered. An ambassadros children have been kidnapped. Holmes is under surveillance. And an arse. "Grimm's Fairy Tales" delivered with the same seal at the crimescene. (We later find out they are breadcrumbs.)
The kidnapee left a trail. Holmes gives no sign he realises it to be a trap.
Modern CSI equivalent of the "I know every mud in London" thing. And kinda actually has a meaningful conversation with Molly. Which he almost doesn't mess up worse than she does!
Quote the sixth: "You're a bit like my Dad; he's dead."
Quote the seventh: "Youcan see me. I don't count."
Finding the abandoned sweets factory, we get another reference to the irregulars, and a Holmes-up-display. He finds them. And traumatises a small girl. Again.
More taunting! Yay! And he ditches Watson. The police decide Holmes' deduction was literally impossible and thus that he did it. More moriarty TV! And rather than, you know, it turning out to be a murder-cab, it's moriarty; and one of the hitmen is killed. Holmes decides the hitmen are in competition with each other. And finds the cameras. And, um, refuses to come to the police station.
Quote the eighth: "No one could fake being such an annoying dick all the time."
Belated delivery of a burnt gingerbread man.
Holmes... escapes. So that he can become a fugitive. And jumps in front of a bus to force another hitman to save him. (Which gets said hitman shot) And we decide that Moriarty left the MaxGuffin? (which probably doens't exist) in Holmes' flat. So he goes after the journalist.
Where he bumps into Moriarty; who claims to be an actor Holmes hired. And is kinda convincing as a heel. "Don't hurt me!"
Wild leap of illogic! Off he goes, back to the lab. To tell Molly she does count, and he trusts her. And that he's about to die. She agrees, pretty much, to do anything for him. He says he needs her.
Watson makes a similar leap; and blames Dull for leaking everything to the press. Who confesses to having tortured Moriarty, who milked him.
Well, that was an unexpected cliffhanger. My TV app blew up. Oops. Well, you all nkow how it ends, and fun though this is, I think I'll sleep now.
Right, problem debugged - hard drive filled. Transport streams are meaty! We return to viewing with Watson looking at Holmes' corpse, lying bloody in the London street. And then we cut to Holmes, pointing a high powered rifle at Watson, and putting it away. The papers decide Holmes was a fake, and he committed suicide. Where's my waterfall? I was promised a waterfall!
Back to the psychiatrists office. Then a funeral, with only Watson and Mrs Hudson there. She remembers bad stuff, he won't go back to the flat. He does a eulogy, it's kinda praisy.
Quote the whatever: "One more miracle. Don't. Be. Dead. Come on, stoppit. Stop this."
And there he is. Revealing (only to the audience) that he's not dead. Which, uh, we knew aready. Unless there was somehting in the bit I missed where we didn't.
You know, missing that chunk makes it MUCH more like the book.
From memory: The bit you're missing is where John gets called away because he gets a text that Mrs. Hudson has been shot. Meanwhile Sherlock has texted Moriarty asking him to come to the roof of the hospital. Sherlock gets a reply; goes up to the roof. Moriarty says that Sherlock was too easy to beat, he was like the ordinary people. Sherlock mimes holding something; Moriarty presumes it's the key. Sherlock recalls the finger tapping that Moriarty did when they sat together, and says that that is the key, and he's going to use it to bring back the Jim Moriarty identity. Moriarty reveals that he never had a key - it was all done by inside stooges. The fingertap sequence is from the Bach piece Sherlock played before their meeting.
Moriarty then presses Sherlock to commit suicide, as that is what this has all been leading up to. If he doesn't commit suicide, three trained assassins will kill Mrs. Hudson, Lestrade, and Watson. Sherlock goes to the edge, but starts laughing while he's on the edge. Moriarty wonders what he's missed; Holmes says that if they can be called off, then as long as he has Moriarty, then they can be called off. (This bit is a bit weird). Moriarty says Sherlock's on the side of the angels; Sherlock then says he's like Moriarty, but although he may be on the side of the angels, he definitely isn't one. Moriarty looks longingly into Sherlock's eyes before agreeing: while he is alive the assassins can be called off. So, he pulls out a gun and shoots himself in the head. Sherlock realises to save his friends he has to jump off the building, but just as he is about to, Watson pulls up in a cab. They have a last conversation (suicide note sort of thing) and Sherlock says that it was all made up, he was a fraud, etc, etc. Then he jumps off the building.